Morgan Spurlock Follows ONE DIRECTION.

Morgan Spurlock, San Francisco, CA 8/8/13 (Photo by Andrea Chase)

It was only natural that Morgan Spurlock would talk about the state of the contemporary music business at some point in our interview on August 8, 2013. I was interviewing the award-winning documentarian about his latest theatrical release, ONE DIRECTION: THIS IS US, and I had been curious about whether or not it had been difficult to get the music rights to a Disney song that one member of the boy band had begun singing spontaneously between gigs. What I wasn’t expecting was the news about a song he had desperately wanted to get the rights to for SUPER SIZE ME, the doc that put him on the map. Maybe it’s just me, but he still sounded just a little bitter, though throughout the conversation, Mr. Spurlock proved himself, as always, to be a man with a quick wit, a self-deprecating sense of humor, and a sly take on the world at large.

His take on One Direction was to be astonished by how young they are, how hard they work, and how interesting it was to catch them at the cusp of their fame. Facing the proper use of miso soup, being trapped in a retail store, and the changing relationships with their families was all there in the film, as was, thanks to Spurlock’s puckish sense of humor, a neurologist to explain exactly what happens in the brains of teenage girls when in the presence of their idols. It was, in fact, how I began our chat.